Tooling Wizard: We will add a UI wizard on top of the command line basedSyncSvcUtil utility. This wizard will guide you to select tables, columns, and even rows to define a sync scope, provision/de-provision a database and generate server-side/client-side code based on the data schema that you have.

iPhone Sample: An updated and improved sample shows you how to develop an offline application on iPhone/iPad with SQLite for a particular remote schema by consuming the protocol directly.

The SOA Manifesto was finally agreed on and "inked" on this ceremony. Although not a set of earth-changing statements, they would have been a decade ago, it represents a set of common sense from all the more vocal guys in this area.

Personally I couldn't find anything that would leave uncomfortable any of the major players, so the whole lists is too "soft" and "vague" that no one will complain. As I said, everyone had enough time to adapt during the last years. If this is still relevant nowadays? I don't believe so, maybe for their personal curriculum/branding/marketing, but for the industry this will be just a reference to update in the marketing documentation - Everyone already writes those statements in their Marketing lingo.

Where I believe change/impact will happen, will be in the frameworks & languages people will use to collaboratively develop those integration challenges:

Will we have wiki-style development of contracts? text-based and/or visually? oslo?

Will we have expressive and simple languages for mapping? Grails/GORM?

Will we have convention-over-configuration as we didn't had with Indigo/WCF? ADO.NET Data Services?

Will we have auto-magical-injected-best-practices-guidance like in RoR or MVC?

And surely everyone will be soa-manifesto complaint, interoperable and extensible!

Now we have a manifesto, proper and extensible plumbing (WS-*), auto translations/representations (SOAP/REST/json), dropped UML&Java to DSLs. It's time for the frameworks & tools to show up now!

I've never been so curious about the PDC's announcements as this year. I have no doubt this moment will be very important not only for the Microsoft's developer community, but anyone in the industry that is starting to see more and more value coming from all the services (building blocks) available on the net. I’m not talking about the “classical” remote functions calls over the net – that become ubiquitous with the SOAP/REST/XML generation. I’m expecting from Microsoft’s new cloud APIs and Services that all these hooks into my laptop I’ve been using lately (live mesh, groove, messenger, outlook, …), that they become building blocks for us to develop new applications. They are already available of course, but there isn’t anything as coherent, extensible and simple as a single runtime that can make the adoption of these new paradigms just explode (the “tipping point”). Countdown to PDC 2008: This is the Software + Services PDC, Plus a Hard Drive Chock Full o’Bits is a PDC Attendee’s Dream Come True!

I remember .NET 1.0 as the tipping point for the web services generation. It made developers shift from old religious disputes around programming languages (eg. Java), distributed programming (CORBA, DCOM), client vs server programming (win32, applets, CGI, J2EE, J2ME, WAP). This shift has made us all move forward to other discussions, and although we all see the javascript runtime coming back (AJAX), there’s a bunch of new challenges we would all love to solve without having to put dozens of developers building all the plumbing in each project.

How difficult it is today to deploy software on the internet that:

· Is auto-updatable (code), syncs (data), even from P2P layers …

· …and leverages every marginal enhancement deployed on those new laptops;

· Runs online, and offline, and can even optimize bandwidth availability;

· Works from behind firewalls and all those NAT routers out there…

· …without having to use VPNs or explicitly publishing internal addresses+ports;

· Makes data (including web apps) available 24/7, geo dispersed…

· …at a cost that is ridiculous compared to buying any servers/harddrives.

This is my 3rd PDC, and every announcement is making me more confident this Live Mesh runtime, that I’m using for several months already, will open the new opportunity "Windows”

Learn how the Microsoft Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) vision and technology can help you realize a more agile and connected enterprise by using an IT infrastructure that can help streamline business processes, increase customer responsiveness, and improve interactions with key partners.

Applications commonly communicate with other applications, both inside and outside the organization. Modern applications also must often fit into a service-oriented architecture (SOA), exposing some of their functionality as interoperable services accessible by other software. Achieving these goals requires support for service-oriented applications to communicate with other services.

In this session we’ll share with you the technology Microsoft provides to build web services that support the latest WS-* standards endorsed by all major vendors. In addition, we’ll tie it in with the previous discussion around Software Factories and show how Microsoft supports rapid development of these services through tooling support.

In this session we will discuss the Business Process and Workflow capabilities necessary in service oriented architecture and provide guidance for selecting the most appropriate technology from Microsoft’s portfolio. We will discuss the requirements for service composition in client applications, composite services, service intermediaries, and line of business applications. In addition, we will examine the differences between general purpose workflow platforms, domain specific workflow products, and cross organization business process concerns.

The advance in tooling has allowed business to drive down the cost of development by over 100% in the last 10 years. However, in the same period of time the number of successful projects has not increased significantly. In fact it has consistently run at right around 30% of projects are deemed successful. Software development, as currently practiced, is slow, expensive and error prone, often yielding products with large numbers of defects, causing serious problems of usability, reliability, performance, security and other qualities of service.

This talk addresses how to identify typical customer pains in software development and shows how Microsoft tools offer a solution that enables collaboration across the extended team of project managers, architects, developers, testers, and business stakeholders and allows new solutions to be developed faster, cheaper and better though industrialization of software development.

Solution Supply Chains - Jack Greenfield - He decided not do do a demo of Web Service Software Factory - We can do ourselves that at home - We would not get the vision that people at MS is getting - It also did not installed correctly on Jack's machine (LOL) Agenda: - Learning Read More...

Enterprise Architect Group Final Meeting - The Role of An Architect - Check "Developing the Future" whitepaper. There is also a Microsoft response to it. - There is going to be a DTF version 2 - Why having focus groups like this in conferences? - The role of an architect could benefit from clarity Read More...

What Do Architects Do, Anyway? - Ron Jacobs, Microsoft, Architect Evangelist http:// arcast.net (or) www.arcast.tv for video http://ronjacobs.com - What is the role of the architect? - What is software architecture? - Do I want to become an architect? - Architecture as a profession - Read More...

Active or Passive Federation for the Enterprise - Steve Plank, Identity Architect, Microsoft - Federation Flow - Home-round discovery is the process of knowing of all the trust relations I have which one will be the one that applies to me - All the redirection is done using HTTP 302 - Check the WS-Federation Read More...

Enterprise Architect Group Second Meeting - EN01 (II Part) - Architecture has not the same scope as systems engeneering - There are similarities with a physical arquitect - The deliverables make difference, at the end of the day that will be what distinguishes architects Architects flavors - Enterprise Read More...

SOA for Support and Maintenance - Steve Jones, Head of SOA, Capgemini - There *is* a SOA Reference Model: adopt the OASIS SOA Reference Model - Its independent - Its an OASIS Standard - Its applicable to business and IT services (...) - IT needs to change to be about Value, not Cost - Read More...

Roadmap to Strategic SOA - David Sprott, CBDI - SOA is very old, this session will start with an assessment to help participants understand what is their current SOA adoption stage - CBDI Presentation, SOA consultants - Specialist firm provinding actionable guidance and support Read More...

Where to place your SOA bets? - Sam Lowe, Capgemini, sam.lowe@capgemini.com - The SOA has to pay off, otherwise it will loose credibility - Why SOA bets? - Definitions of SOA differ and stakeholders are unclear - The roadmaps out there are unclear - An SOA initiative has to be a change Read More...

Enterprise Architect Group First Meeting - What architects have in common: incorrect job titles - Tables are: - Strategy - Infrastructure - Solutions - Enterprise - What are the generic attributes of an architect? - Where is the value of beeing an architect? - Enterprise architect engages with Read More...

Introduction - 150 delegates Intro by Matt Deacon, Chief Architect Advisor, Microsoft UK - OpenXML is an ECMA standard and MS wants it to be an ISO standard - Signatures will be submitted to the british council for approval Ed Gibson, Chief Security Advisor, Microsoft Read More...

The Social Life of Information

Abstract:

For too long, the industry just focused on the backend aspects of information. We made great progress in modeling, storing and transmitting information across our corporate landscape. However, humans are not directly interacting with middleware and servers but they collaborate with different front-ends and devices while participating in prescribed and adhoc processes and workflows. This forum takes a closer look at the technical and social challenges of such collaborating solutions and discusses how Microsoft addresses these challenges with 2007 Office System. Namely, we’re going to have an architectural look at the following aspects of 2007 Office System:

· Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0Windows Sharepoint Services build the foundation of 2007 Office Sharepoint Server. The newly designed and re-architected Sharepoint Services 3.0 are built on top of ASP.NET 2.0. Through this change in architecture, concepts like master pages, authentication providers or web-parts are now also available within Sharepoint Services and Sharepoint Server Solutions.

· CollaborationBeside many other things, the new Office platform provides an infrastructure for team sites, workflows, list and document libraries. Through this infrastructure, users can easily create and maintain their own Blogs or Wiki’s or can subscribe to site changes through RSS subscriptions.

· PortalPortal solutions support important aspects for enterprises such as search across different WSS instances, people management (incuding audience and role management). Through the business datat catalog (BDC), line of business (LOB) data can be reflected within the portal itself, and this without custom coding.

· SearchIn addition to search across the different sharepoint sites, 2007 Office System provides the powerful capability to index and search line of business (LOB) data using the business data catalog (BDC) and therefore provides search capabilities across list and document libraries as well as the integrated backend systems.

· Business ProcessesBusiness processes can easily be implemented using the integrated workflow support of Windows Sharepoint Services. In addition to this, the InfoPath form services provide a great way to capture data as part of an overall process.

· Business IntelligenceBI is an integrated part of the Office System platform. Whether this is in the form of dashboards, key performance indexes (KPI), Excel Services or the report center, the office platform provides an infrastructure to display and manage reports and BI information in one central place.

Speaker Bio:

Beat Schwegler is an Architect in Microsoft EMEA Developer and Platform Evangelism Group. He provides advice and consulting to enterprise companies in software architecture and related topics and is a frequent speaker at international events and conferences. He has more than 13 years experience in professional software development and architecture and has been involved in a wide variety of projects, ranging from real-time building control systems, best selling shrink-wrapped products to large scale CRM and ERP systems.

What’s at stake in the fiercely contested application server race? Plenty, according to IDC, which has IBM, BEA, Oracle, Sun, and a host of other vendors vying for their share of a surging application server market segment.

This site contains extensive materials designed to help you evaluate Microsoft .NET vs. J2EE application server technologies. Each area below contains downloadable whitepapers, benchmark comparisons, and sample source code. If you are a Java developer interested in learning more about .NET, please also visit the following resources:

Never before has technology been so much a part of our lives. But we don’t yet know what to expect - nor do we know how it’s going to impact on our lives and lifestyles.

What opportunities are there for integrating technologies into our daily routines? What problems do technologies solve and what problems are they creating for the future? Will technology increase the distances between people, those who have access to technology and those who don’t?

These kinds of questions are on many people’s mind. And yet there isn’t just one answer to most of them. Opening a dialogue is what we want to do in SHIFT.

Jack Greenfield is an Architect for Enterprise Frameworks and Tools at Microsoft. He was previously Chief Architect, Practitioner Desktop Group, at Rational Software Corporation, and Founder and CTO of InLine Software Corporation. At NeXT, he developed the Enterprise Objects Framework, now called Apple Web Objects. A well known speaker and writer, he also contributed to UML, J2EE and related OMG and JSP specifications. He holds a B.S. in Physics from George Mason University.

Keith Short leads Enterprise Frameworks and Tools Architecture Team at Microsoft. He helped lead design of the Information Engineering Facility from Texas Instruments Inc., now Advantage Gen from Computer Associates Inc. He was later named a TI Fellow and became CTO for Software at TI. He contributed to UML 1.0, and lectures at conferences and seminars world wide. He holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from the University of Lancaster, and a Ph.D in Computer Science from the University of East Anglia.

Steve Cook is an Architect for Enterprise Frameworks and Tools at Microsoft. He founded the Object-Oriented Programming and Systems Group of the British Computer Society, and the Object Technology conference series. He was a Research Fellow at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London University. He started the Object Technology Practice at IBM, became a Distinguished Engineer, and was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology. With John Daniels he developed the Syntropy method, and was a major contributor to UML, introducing OCL, and representing IBM on the UML2 submission. He is a British Computer Society Fellow, and has an Honorary Doctor of Science from De Montford University.

Stuart Kent is a Program Manager for Enterprise Frameworks and Tools at Microsoft. He was Senior Lecturer at the University of Kent and a Royal Society Industry Fellow, supported by IBM. He contributed to the UML 2 and MOF 2 standardisation efforts, and has done extensive research, with over 60 refereed publications. He speaks frequently at international events, and participates in numerous programme committees, including the steering committee for the UML conference series, and the editorial board for SoSym journal. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Imperial College, London.

MDA is misnamed: it is not an architecture at all; it is a standardized approach to model-driven development based on abstraction of platform similarities. As promoted by the OMG, it does not address the broader issues involved in using integrated models, patterns, frameworks, and tools synergistically to support software product lines. Furthermore ... the fact that the MDA is based on the use of the UML and MOF specifications restricts its usefulness even more. [pág 6]

At Microsoft, we firmly believe that modeling is an increasingly important aspect of the software development process, and we will integrate support for modeling into forthcoming releases of Microsoft Visual Studio. We believe that it is essential to design modeling languages very carefully to suit the skills of their target users: we intend to delight our users by giving them an experience of modeling that is intuitive, agile, productive, and seamless. We are targeting our first modeling products at areas that we believe will give most immediate benefit to our customers. At the recent Microsoft Professional Developers’ conference, we announced modeling tools–we call them designers–that help the developer to design and deploy distributed service-oriented applications. [pág 5]

Steve Cook is a Software Architect in the Enterprise Frameworks and Tools group at Microsoft, which he joined at the beginning of 2003. Previously he was a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, whom he represented in the UML 2.0 specification process at the OMG. He has worked in the IT industry for almost 30 years, as architect, programmer, consultant and teacher, and has focused on modeling languages and tools since the 1980s. He has published a book and many papers and articles on software-related topics.